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Historic Streetcars in San Francisco

No.1060

Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company

Built 1947 • Operational

This streetcar is an actual Philadelphia streetcar painted in that city’s original PCC livery, dating from 1938. Although Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co. (PRT) was the largest streetcar operator that was not a member of the coalition that designed the famous PCC streetcar, it was still an early buyer.

Todd Lappin photo.

Philadelphia’s first batch of 20 PCCs ran on Wayne Avenue’s route 53. In 1940, successor company Philadelphia Transportation Co. (PTC) ordered 130 more PCCs, and the following year–worried that impending war would shut off availability of new cars–bought an additional 110. Philly’s new PCCs soldiered hard, carrying the wartime crush of riders, and may have saved the system from early bus conversion.
Following World War II, PTC ordered more PCCs. This car was part of that group, arriving new in Philadelphia in 1947, numbered 2715. The later years of the Philadelphia PCC story are recounted in the description of Muni Car No. 1055, which was also part of that postwar Philadelphia PCC purchase.
Car No. 1060, which Muni acquired from Philadelphia as part of the initial F-line fleet, models the original PTC livery of silver with cream window area and electric blue striping. The similarity to the packaging of Kraft’s famous ‘Philadelphia Cream Cheese’ did not go unnoticed, providing the car a nickname — the Cream Cheese Car.
When it originally went into Muni service in 1995, car No. 1060 was painted to represent Newark, New Jersey. In November 2002, the car suffered severe body damage when she took a curve at Market and Steuart too fast, jumped the track, and hit a lightpost. After extensive repairs, Muni repainted No. 1060 in this 1938 silver and blue Philadelphia livery to replace the paint scheme in Muni’s fleet by wrecked PCC No. 1054. That Newark livery is now worn in Muni’s fleet by a streetcar that actually ran in Newark, No. 1070.
» Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Co. No. 1007
» Philadelphia Transportation Co. (PTC) No. 1055